The maintenance and repair of heating, ventilating, air conditioning (HVAC), and plumbing systems requires proper identification of the individual components that make up the system. System owners and HVAC professionals need to know which valves and pipes, for example, are dedicated to which system units, such as kitchen sink, first floor toilet, cold water shut off, fourth floor ice machine, etc. The original installer of an HVAC system may initially know the layout of a system well but, without proper labeling of the HVAC components, as the system needs maintenance over the course of its life, the installer may not remember the layout perfectly. This is especially true as valves and other HVAC components in a utility space usually all look very similar.
It is also common for other HVAC professionals or system owners to need to work on the system and they may have no idea which valves control which system units. As valves are often controlling liquid or gas access at the beginning of a main branch of a local utility system, it is particularly important for the valve user to know what the consequence of opening or closing the valve will be, so as not to flood or otherwise damage the HVAC/plumbing system, building in which the HVAC/plumbing system resides, and/or valve user. If the valves are not properly labeled, a simple faucet leak that might usually easily be fixed by a system owner, might unnecessarily require the calling in of an HVAC/plumbing professional. That professional may have to perform unnecessary and potentially dangerous experimentation to properly identify the correct valve. More importantly, in the case of a burst pipe or other circumstance when a valve needs to be closed quickly, the system owner and/or HVAC professional need to be able to quickly identify HVAC/plumbing system components. Should the wrong valve be turned, or precious time wasted closing different valves, a simple situation can become a very costly one.
Beyond the need to provide an identification of the HVAC system component controlled by a valve, future owners or users of the system may also need to identify and contact the HVAC professional who installed the system. For example, it is common for a complex HVAC system to be installed in a house that is subsequently sold or rented out. Should repairs or maintenance be necessary, the new owner or tenant would not know who installed the system and could spend a considerable amount of money having another professional learn about the system to perform a task that could be inexpensively performed by the initial installer.
Several options currently exist to label system components. Valves may include indications to let a user know when the valve is open or closed, but this does not tell the user anything about the aspect of a system that the valve serves. Valve tags may be attached to valves to identify their function. However, tags may be removed, damaged, or lost so that the identification is thwarted. Painting or stickers may also be applied to surfaces to identify components. However, painting and stickers also may fade, suffer from humidity or water damage, be removed, etc. Therefore, such identification options have the potential to lose their utility over the course of the HVAC system's life. Moreover, such options traditionally do not include information such as the date of installation or contact information for the valve supplier and/or installer.
Therefore there is a need for permanent integral identification of the function of and information about HVAC/plumbing system components, the date of installation and contact information for the valve supplier and/or installer.